Free Avenger of Antares by Alan Burt Akers

place in my thoughts, in any case — I said to Nulty: “Listen and mark me well. You take these new people. They are free, you tell me. Well, there will be no slaves in Paline Valley. No slaves, ever again. You understand?”
    “I hear you, master.” He rubbed his ear. “I cannot say I understand. Some work is hard for a man, and it is fitting that a slave should do this work.”
    “However fitting it is, there will be no slaves in Paline Valley.”
    “As you say, Amak.” Then he fixed his shrewd eyes on me. “And if we are raided again and we take some prisoners. Must we then not put them to slavery, but kill them all?”
    Of course, that was an old ethical poser.
    “If they cannot be exchanged they will be ransomed. If not, you must talk to them and set them free and promise them if they come again they will surely be slain.”
    “It seems to me you store up trouble against the future.”
    “By Krun! I know whereof I speak!”
    “Yes, master.”
    I wasn’t going to apologize to him, for you know my views on that. Instead, I said: “Make sure you enlist a good force of flyers, mirvol men in preference to fluttrell riders. The old Amak had a fine mirvol aerial cavalry.”
    “Aye, master.”
    “I am going out now. Rustle out some fine fancy clothes, lots of lace and gewgaws. The Hamun ham Farthytu those ninnies of the sacred quarter know will walk among them again, in all his foppish finery, for the last time.”
    I dressed in drippings of lace and bows, silken ribbons, fancy blue trousers, frilled white shirt, and a glaring green jacket with a scarlet cape thrown over all. I looked terrible. I wore one of these hard black Spanish hats, with a narrow black leather under the back of my head. My boots had been spat into a polished luster by Nulty. I waved a kerchief in my right hand and held a beribboned balass cane in my left. As I say, I looked a foppish fool.
    But I buckled on one of those fine rapiers Delia had given me, and its matching left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar.
    So I sallied forth to meet again Rees the lion-man, and dear chinless Chido, and all the others of my acquaintance among that raffish set of the sacred quarter.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Wersting versus manhound
    The sacred quarter of Ruathytu is a twisting maze of alleys penned between the walls of the villas secluded in their grounds or balanced upon crags and heights within the city. There are boulevards intersecting with colonnades and lines of shops. There is a huge open square, a piazza with colonnades on three or four levels, drenched with flowers and greenery, laced with the tinkle of waterfalls, the great Kyro of the Vadvars. At the eastern end of the quarter on its V-shaped spit of land rises the three-domed Great Temple of Havil the Green. Under one of those domes is situated the Palace of Names. The name of ham Farthytu would be engraved in marble there before I left Ruathytu. The sacred quarter contains salles d’armes, the dueling halls, theaters, drinking dens, fighting arenas for the smaller but no less bloody encounters, tavern after tavern, and dopa dens. In short, the sacred quarter is a brawling, colorful, and vibrant section of a city, and just such a quarter is to be found in any great city of Kregen. Here in Hamalese Ruathytu, though, all the energy does not add up to a great shout of good living, of a zest for life. The Hamalians are a glum folk, as I have said, and they need perhaps a little too much of the stimulation of the Jikhorkdun, the great amphitheater, to bring a glow to their sallow faces.
    I feel I do them an injustice, but give me the folk of Sanurkazz, or Vondium, or some of Zenicce, any time!
    Looking back, I find it incredible in these accounts that I have not described in any detail the great city of Vondium, capital of Vallia, or, come to that, my own capital city of Valkanium in Valka.
    By Zair! How we could sing in
The Fleeced Ponsho
in Sanurkazz, or in my high hall of Esser Rarioch in